Time to Think and A Visit to Town

Looking at the sky frozen, hanging in the air around us. Canis major sat in the sky. It was in a 63 degree rotation away from us so the angle was wrong by today's standards and some of the stars were hidden behind the major stars of the system but looking at it, the constellation and the sigil were without a doubt the same. "This explains why we didn't notice that it was canis major at first, the shape is wrong even compared to three thousand years ago, the system was different but very much the same lines, the same pattern. "Now the question was sister, who at the party sealed this chest and what did they put in it?" I asked, as I pulled the chest closer remembering the damage done by its entry into our home. "It had to have a powerful enchantment in order to not even be scratched." She replied exploring the makeshift safe with her hands as I held it. She was searching for something that eyes couldn't see. I opened my mind to the ebbs and flows of magic, looking at the box, watching the glint of colorless light shining through each point in the constellation inlaid into the chest. Looking at it deeper I could see that the light was actually coming through the gems used to seal the box, not from inside like I thought. "Sister!" Only managed to say because she realized the same thing at the same moment I did.

Our second clue came shortly after the memory stone, and with the gems we started to think more of the box as a living thing instead of merely an enchanted thing. The feeling of the wood was familiar but not like any wood common to the human world. "Honestly this wood should have been another clue, I didn't notice it at first but its egg shell thin like the mask from my dream." Mhy voice was small, almost silent as I spoke. I hadn't told them much about my dream yet and they didn't know about the mask. The mask and the wood were only just simulare, the wood that comprised the box wasn't the same off white of my dream mask but it felt just as thin, just as lite and alive. Reaching into the wood with my awareness augmented by my essence, I felt something shifting and moving in the wood; it was something alive. "I think this is made out of Tessa's bark brother!" Karen exclaimed to me. I should have noticed it sooner, it had reminded me of something but it's been over two thousand years ago. It was made of the same strong thin bark as the invitation had been, sent by the Mother of Trees to that party. It was so long ago but now it seems that night was more faithful then it seemed and was becoming a reminder to me as to why we shouldn't miss functions no matter how tiresome or boring they may seem. "I was polite to her when I replied that I wasn't going, right? I mean I didn't say anything to offend her? Or GODS! You six didn't do anything to offend her while you were there, David or Matt?" I asked my sister who had now moved to the ground closer to the fire, she was holding the box up to its heat. "It can't be hurt by any of the elements, though I should have guessed as much from its arrival to our home." She spoke as she was holding the chest not just up to the fire but in it. Being a magical flame it gave off heat and cold in equal measure and should have been able to produce a mare or even just soot the surface of the enigmatic box. "See nothing, so smoke, no burn or frost. It doesn't even pass over the box or around it. It's as if the box sat in a space where elements just didn't acknowledge its existence." As she spoke I could hear the gears in her mind working overtime. This had to be exciting for her, few of us had seen even a few new events in a while. Not ailments, not behavior, we didn't see new treatments or ways of treating one another. It was all reactionary, transactional. So for something that not only made an impression but actually impressed one of us but all of us was remarkable to say the least.

Karen turned to speak but I interrupted her, sensing what she was going to say not with our magic but with the nature of kinship and a few thousand years together. "What, I know! It's amazing isn't it?" I said before she started talking, "I'm impressed too but it still makes me wonder who sent it, where did it come from. Why did it come to us?" I had to ask out loud with a hint of irritation in the even brass of my voice, I was betrayed by not so much sound but my tempo, my cadence changed when I was impatient. It prevented me from being a good liar and from playing poker.

"I mean it has to be connected in some way right? " I started pacing my room as I thought about what the implications could be. My dream of a mask with golden arms hidden deep under its dark surface, eggshell thin but strong and durable enough to withstand the passing of time, a box equally thin, equally strong. Both mystical and suggesting having been grown instead of carved or built. Both coming to us, or at least to me with the family being in orbit around the events. Still I couldn't assume it was an event aimed at me. Pogs did live here and he was a major player in one of the events of this mystery from the past. "Do you think Pogs might know anything more about this situation?" Karen asked, mainly because he was the one who knew about the sigil on the chest. "Maybe this is just a mix up, it could be a really belated engagement present that Tressa sent and it's only now just getting here, right?" My brow raised on one side as I asked. I knew it was a pointless question, I mean even with the time differences or time dilations between the Earth Realm and the dozens and dozens of worlds connected to it there was really no way it could have taken this long for a mystic present to find its way to its intended receiver. "No matter what the answers are to our questions we'll have to wait a day or two, Pog's Billy Weed put him to sleep and in his old age I think it will be at least a day before he's in shape to answer any of our questions or to face any reality his past might be trying to address him." I said, poor Pogs he was sweet and dear, no one should have to face what he faced all that time ago.

It was a few decades after the party that was meant to be the showrunner to his wedding. All of the 'Shroom Trolls had been gathered for a clan gathering. A new sprout was coming up after centuries of spores going without offspring so the entire family was there. A 'Shroom child was a child of the village. Its parents were the main caregivers but no spore was ever cared for alone. It was such a stay of their clan's traditions that during the child's bringing she or he would travel from real to realm and continent to continent visiting long arms of family and spending months if not years with them in order to learn the culture and traditions of the 'Shroom Trolls. Even compared to the nature of our peoples tradition it was intense. As newborns and every child in our village was shared with everyone, we didn't just have a couple of cousins or a couple of aunts and uncles we were all cousins, every adult an aunt or uncle. Some more directly by blood then others but a relation of one form or another. As such we were all responsible to and for one another. We were such a close community even after our settlement spread across the river and east past the bay we had no laws, well one law. Do nothing that would harm the people, or go harmfully against the village. I suppose that could be interpreted in a lot of ways. Murder went against the village, hoarding food hurt someone in the village, cowardice could harm the village. Still the reality of the rule lay in the semantics of it all. Who was murdered and why, were you keeping food for just yourself or for some greater reason, ect and ect. "Semantics might be the answer to our biggest question." I stopped pacing and turned to my sister as I spoke up, realizing that there might be a reason that we didn't see yet." Yes my hope was in the semantics of it all.

No matter what the answer was to our questions, none of it could be directly addressed tonight or even tomorrow morning. So the chest went into the locked catacombs in the spare antic of my room. The night and the following day went on much as it normally did. House would tend to our needs and those of the many beings that called it home. My family fiddled away at our different interests, magical quests would visit from the surrounding valleys and glens untouched by humans. In the evening of the first night of our new adventure I decided I wanted to visit one of my favorite cities, Boston Ma.

I flew down to the main road and took an alley from there to the Red Line train.

I visited the city back when the first cornerstone of the first public building was being laid, its foundation was meant to be thick and last for all time or at least the time of humanity's existence if not a little more. I was already well into my second millennium and I marveled at what humans were doing. We as a species may have been invasive and short sighted but amazing nonetheless. A hundred years later after watching the keystone being placed, there was gas lines that brought heat and light to scare the darkness and unknown, away from the streets and walkways of the human world. The heat, the light weren't free to everyone, just like food and housing was made into a money making scheme. Why did so many in the human world only strive to obtain. I never understood it and if I live another three thousand years, I still wouldn't understand. "A gift left to me by my family, my tribe." I said to the cat at my side.

As I walked the wide streets hiding my skin and blue stripes behind my average if not tinted skin. I fit myself into the human size body that I had been born with, nothing that betrayed my existence as Fey could be seen or detected by the mundane. My clothes were even in fashion, though that was thanks to a relatively useless expression. It didn't increase my strength or let me phase untouch through walls. All it did was change as the fashion of time changed. The shirt, the pants, even a tie and jacket if I needed it. The look wasn't just visual either, if a person were to touch my shirt or feel my tie they would feel raw cotton or the soft smooth silk or shiny satin with its smooth, cool, and soft finish. I sat at a bench that funny enough I had commissioned more than a couple of hundred years ago. "To witness the stories that play out here.". J.T. Cunningham." It read on the stamped black iron and cedar bench, it sat in silent observation across from the very corner stone I had watched laid. The wood had been replaced a couple of times but I ensured a trust fund was created to care for the bench. I handed it down to my "son, then my grandson, then my great grandson," and so on. The law firm minding the trust for my family was amazed at just how many sons our fathers had. "See Kimmy! Good strong family blood, unlike your mother! All daughters!" The old man infront of me said, to who was unmistakable his daughter. Angery that his lot was to hae nothing but daughters and as the law at the time no one to inherent and no one to run the family firm. A couple of times I had to skip out of the office, quickly. From age to age, there were older members of the firm that remember my"Grandfather or great grandfather." It was hard to explain how we looked so much alike.

That was the largest threat when europeans settled here and set up penal colonies to deal with their so-called unwanted problem people. I've found that often the problem people really just meant the poor or needy that fought to survive in a society designed against them, or fought against the established society. Those that established the colonies were never cared for and those that were sent to them often found a new life and new means. Even if it meant that others even less fortunate paid a high price. Guards and officers took land and needed people to work it, so prisoners became indentured servants. When the prisoners were no longer an option from gaining land of their own or having served their time, or escaping deeper into the new land of America, a steady stream of slaves were brought in. Treated like work machines and given only the very basics needed to survive. Even though the indigenous peoples were displaced, were battled and killed by diseases, they had hopes of a better lives than the slaves they brought in. There was a time when the Soix fought to free those entrapped and brought here against their wills. The native tribes in the area thought that not only was it inhuman, but the hope for some was that they would fight for freedom and against the oppression. Sadly few were freed, and fewer could fight and having been pushed out of their lands the natives of the East Coast had to move further inland and disputes soon broke out between the peoples of different tribes. So the capturs, the oppression, the quote civilized people, end quote claimed land that wasn't theirs only to barter it, sell it or hoard it against other Europeans that traveled to it in hopes of a new life. "I suppose that was the nature of these people, many had only ever known war, the French against the British, the English against the Irish, ect and ect." I was talking to no one at all, looking insane, except for the black and grey cat at my feet. I'm sure as I sat at my bench watching people pass by not anymore aware of the history they all passed by day in and day out, history that brought all of them here to this place, in this time. "How foolish and short sighted they all are." I looked down and addressed a pigeon waiting for me to feed it seeds or crumbs that they had grown accustome to.

I suppose ignoring the big picture of our planet and each-others lives was a luxury that the short lived could afford. We as Fey born didn't have to worry about the danger a people or population posed to the planet, but we could see it happen and tried our best to avoid it happening in hopes that future generations would pick up the fight for their only home. It wasn't that we couldn't take them with us across to a new realm. It was that they as a people made a choice to forget about magic, to forget the fey, each alone, silently made a choice to forget their own connection to the source element and their stewardship of the planet.

Our family was still friends with some of Adams and Gerry's families. Two of the founding fathers of not only Boston city but the country that would become to be known as the United States of America. They thought that we were, like them, descendants of the first families. It was just assumed that some ancestor of ours had married into one of the native tribes. Which would explain why we look like mixed children of the anglo-saxion and one of the native tribes.

As little exposure that most people had to indigenous tribes of the Americas there was little chance of any of them assuming or knowing that we are the result of Eskimos and a wide verity of European men. We ranged from Irish to French, English to German.

My mind coming back to the here and now, still on my bench I continued to watch people pass me by. My expression had long ago changed into a smart blue button down shirt open at the neck. Accompanied by jeans and a white jacket. It was amazing that it stayed white no matter how many times I wore it. It was a condition of the expression that I hadn't known about.

It was sad thinking back so far. It made me feel like I was missing something that didn't belong to me. Watching the city being built and the stories of the families that helped birth the foundation of the land around. It was a long story when I thought about all the people living here, or moving away, and still those that had no choice but to live inside the confines of the city. I understood a long time ago, why some humans seemed stuck, seemed sad or disappointed with the life they were born into. Many didn't seem to relize that just picking up and moving away was as easy as thinking about. The answer to their need to stay in one place almost all their lives, it wasn't because their life spans were so short, as I originally thought. It was habit and the need for identity. Even with that limitation some people managed to leave town, they left behind friends and family. Those few that moved often moved back, needing to reconnect with a tangible feeling, an emotion set in a time and a place. So manty lives, and so many stories that start or end or converge in these large cities. A fey like myself could service foreve in a city like Boston. If only it weren't for all the people. As I left my bench and its memories behind I hummed an old tune I learned in a pub in the square that Harverd sits in now. I had feasted on the stories that my bench had witnessed over the last fifty to seventy five years. That faithful spot that was being taken care of by the supposed descendants of my great grandfather, it had watched a couple as the spark of attraction caught both their eyes as they waited for the city bus to come down the street. The wooden planks and iron saw a murder, a mugging, and many, I mean many St. Patrick's day Parades. St. Patties day has become a city highlite due to the large irish population. Bench also watched as a couple of women both new mothers became friends. A crying baby in a stroller started a conversation that bloomed into something of a sisterhood. Also, two men, who were both shy at first ended the first of many days at this bench. They talked about the fun they had in the market district as well as how the financial district had grown so much. They had especially enjoyed being so close to one another of the red and green train lines. Jon and Tim, met there, at the bench to start their dates or to end them for months until finally Jon asked Tim to marry him, and yes the marriage as bench understood it had happened just about six months ago.As I feasted on the stories I was overcome with how humans and America had grown. My bench wasn't an expression but I had commissioned an Elvish blacksmith. Along with the durability to survive during the cities life span and to collect whatever was said or happened near and on it. The bench managed to collect sweet, juicy stories for me to snack on while I watched new history being made. As I turned north and walked down the street I enjoyed the cobble stones that still comprised the majority of roads in the district. As I crossed the street a man, drunk at 2pm in the afternoon slipped and fell in front of me a he crossed the street. I walked up to him, stretched out my hand, and smiled."Do you need help friend?" I asked sincerity in my voice but more importantly in my eyes.

I had earphones in attached to my phone. We were still at a point where the idea of BlueTooth headphones were expensive and didn't hold enough charge to mark wearing them worth while.I helped This guy up,"You good, do you think you're going to fall again?" I asked him as I started to walk away."Hey man, thanks for the help!' He said loudly as he faded into the background of the city never to be seen or heard from again. At least not by me. I crossed over into the heart of Cambridge, rather Harvard Square, still further than Boston. Surrounding areas had become Boston, Cambridge, Rever, by the Hells. Even Salem Mass was just a train ride out of the city. As I sat there I thought about Pogs life and what he's had to face. We had to feed him stories from our life just to bring him back, stories and Billy Weed brought him back to us. I didn't agree with the use of Billy Weed this way but it worked at least for him.